CHAPTER 1: DEFINING THE SELF: PERSONAL AND
DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVES ON SELF AND
IDENTITY
Lesson 1: The Self from Various Philosophical Perspectives
A name is not the person itself no matter how intimately bound it is with the bearer. It is only a signifier.
A person who was named after a saint most probably will not become an actual saint. He may not even
turn out to be saintly! The self is thought to be something else than the name. The self is something that a
person perennially molds, shapes, and develops. The self is not a static thing that one is simply born with
like a mole on one’s face or is just assigned by one’s parents just like a name. Everyone is tasked to
discover one’s self. Have you truly discovered yours?
ABSTRACTION
The history of philosophy is replete with men and women who inquired into the fundamental nature
of the self. Along with the question of the primary substratum that defines the multiplicity of things in
the world, the inquiry on the self has preoccupied the earliest thinkers in the history of philosophy:
the Greeks. The Greeks were the ones who seriously questioned myths and moved away from them in
attempting to understand reality and respond to perennial questions of curiosity including the question
of the self. The different perspectives and views on the self can be best seen and understood by
revisiting its prime moves and identify the most important conjectures made by philosophers from the
ancient times to the most contemporary period.
Socrates and Plato
Prior the Socrates, the Greek thinkers, sometimes collectively called the Pre-Socrates to denote that
some of them preceded Socrates while others existed around Socrates’s time as well, preoccupied
themselves with the question of the primary substratum, arché that explains the multiplicity of things
in the world. These men like Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles, to name a
few, were concerned with explaining what the world is really made up of, why the world is so, and
what explains the changes that they observed around them. Tired of simply conceding to
mythological accounts propounded by poet-theologians like Homer and Hesiod, these men
endeavored to finally locate an explanation about the nature of change, the seeming permanence
despite change, and the unity of the world amidst its diversity.
, After series of thinkers from all across the ancient Greek world who were disturbed by the same
issue, a man came out to question something else. This man was Socrates. Unlike the Pre-Socratics,
Socrates was more concerned with another subject, the problem of the self. He was the first
philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic questioning about the self. To Socrates, and this has
become his life-long mission, the true task of the philosopher is to know oneself.
For Socrates, every man is composed of body and soul. This means that every human person is
dualistic, that is, he is composed of two important aspects of his personhood. For Socrates, this means
all individuals have an imperfect, impermanent aspect to him, and the body, while maintaining that
there is also a soul that is perfect and permanent.
Plato, Socrates’s student, basically took off from his master and supported the idea that man is a dual
nature of body and soul. In addition to what Socrates earlier espoused, Plato added that there are three
components of the soul: the rational soul, the spirited soul, and the appetitive soul. In his magnum
opus, “The Republic” (Plato 2002), Plato emphasizes that justice in the human person can only be
attained if the three parts of the soul are working harmoniously with one another. The rational soul
forged by reason and intellect has to govern the affairs of the human person, the spirited part which is
in charge of emotions should be kept at bay, and the appetitive soul in charge of base desires like
eating, drinking, sleeping, and having sex are controlled as well. When this ideal state is attained, then
the human person’s soul becomes just and virtuous
Augustine and Thomas Aquinas
Augustine’s view of the human person reflects the entire spirit of the medieval world when it comes
to man. Following the ancient view of Plato and infusing it with the newfound doctrine of
Christianity, Augustine agreed that man is of a bifurcated nature. An aspect of man dwells in the
world and is imperfect and continuously yearns to be with the Divine and the other is capable of
reaching immortality.
Thomas Aquinas, the most eminent thirteenth century scholar and stalwart of the medieval
philosophy, appended something to this Christian view. Adapting some ideas from Aristotle, Aquinas
said that indeed, man is composed of two parts: matter and form. Matter, or hyle in Greek, refers to
the “common stuff that makes up everything in the universe.” Man’s body is part of this matter. Form
on the other hand, or morphe in Greek refers to the “essence of a substance or thing.” It is what makes
it what it is. In the case of the human person, the body of the human person is something that he
shares even with animals. The cells in man’s body are more or less akin to the cells of any other
living, organic being int the world. However, what makes a human person a human person and not a
dog, or a tiger is his soul, his essence. To Aquinas, just as in Aristotle, the soul is what animates the
body; it is what makes us humans.
DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVES ON SELF AND
IDENTITY
Lesson 1: The Self from Various Philosophical Perspectives
A name is not the person itself no matter how intimately bound it is with the bearer. It is only a signifier.
A person who was named after a saint most probably will not become an actual saint. He may not even
turn out to be saintly! The self is thought to be something else than the name. The self is something that a
person perennially molds, shapes, and develops. The self is not a static thing that one is simply born with
like a mole on one’s face or is just assigned by one’s parents just like a name. Everyone is tasked to
discover one’s self. Have you truly discovered yours?
ABSTRACTION
The history of philosophy is replete with men and women who inquired into the fundamental nature
of the self. Along with the question of the primary substratum that defines the multiplicity of things in
the world, the inquiry on the self has preoccupied the earliest thinkers in the history of philosophy:
the Greeks. The Greeks were the ones who seriously questioned myths and moved away from them in
attempting to understand reality and respond to perennial questions of curiosity including the question
of the self. The different perspectives and views on the self can be best seen and understood by
revisiting its prime moves and identify the most important conjectures made by philosophers from the
ancient times to the most contemporary period.
Socrates and Plato
Prior the Socrates, the Greek thinkers, sometimes collectively called the Pre-Socrates to denote that
some of them preceded Socrates while others existed around Socrates’s time as well, preoccupied
themselves with the question of the primary substratum, arché that explains the multiplicity of things
in the world. These men like Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles, to name a
few, were concerned with explaining what the world is really made up of, why the world is so, and
what explains the changes that they observed around them. Tired of simply conceding to
mythological accounts propounded by poet-theologians like Homer and Hesiod, these men
endeavored to finally locate an explanation about the nature of change, the seeming permanence
despite change, and the unity of the world amidst its diversity.
, After series of thinkers from all across the ancient Greek world who were disturbed by the same
issue, a man came out to question something else. This man was Socrates. Unlike the Pre-Socratics,
Socrates was more concerned with another subject, the problem of the self. He was the first
philosopher who ever engaged in a systematic questioning about the self. To Socrates, and this has
become his life-long mission, the true task of the philosopher is to know oneself.
For Socrates, every man is composed of body and soul. This means that every human person is
dualistic, that is, he is composed of two important aspects of his personhood. For Socrates, this means
all individuals have an imperfect, impermanent aspect to him, and the body, while maintaining that
there is also a soul that is perfect and permanent.
Plato, Socrates’s student, basically took off from his master and supported the idea that man is a dual
nature of body and soul. In addition to what Socrates earlier espoused, Plato added that there are three
components of the soul: the rational soul, the spirited soul, and the appetitive soul. In his magnum
opus, “The Republic” (Plato 2002), Plato emphasizes that justice in the human person can only be
attained if the three parts of the soul are working harmoniously with one another. The rational soul
forged by reason and intellect has to govern the affairs of the human person, the spirited part which is
in charge of emotions should be kept at bay, and the appetitive soul in charge of base desires like
eating, drinking, sleeping, and having sex are controlled as well. When this ideal state is attained, then
the human person’s soul becomes just and virtuous
Augustine and Thomas Aquinas
Augustine’s view of the human person reflects the entire spirit of the medieval world when it comes
to man. Following the ancient view of Plato and infusing it with the newfound doctrine of
Christianity, Augustine agreed that man is of a bifurcated nature. An aspect of man dwells in the
world and is imperfect and continuously yearns to be with the Divine and the other is capable of
reaching immortality.
Thomas Aquinas, the most eminent thirteenth century scholar and stalwart of the medieval
philosophy, appended something to this Christian view. Adapting some ideas from Aristotle, Aquinas
said that indeed, man is composed of two parts: matter and form. Matter, or hyle in Greek, refers to
the “common stuff that makes up everything in the universe.” Man’s body is part of this matter. Form
on the other hand, or morphe in Greek refers to the “essence of a substance or thing.” It is what makes
it what it is. In the case of the human person, the body of the human person is something that he
shares even with animals. The cells in man’s body are more or less akin to the cells of any other
living, organic being int the world. However, what makes a human person a human person and not a
dog, or a tiger is his soul, his essence. To Aquinas, just as in Aristotle, the soul is what animates the
body; it is what makes us humans.
